In an effort to alleviate investor anxiety, fixed-income guru Bill Gross has taken over daily responsibility of four of Pacific Investment Management Co.’s close-end bond funds.

This is at least the second time this year that Gross has assumed daily responsibility for particular PIMCO funds. In May, he took over some of the firm’s high-yield investments after Mark Hudoff, the previous manager, left to join another firm. “I think to reassure clients, Bill Gross is saying ‘I’m going to step in and make sure it stays on an even keel,’ ” Burton Greenwald, president of Philadelphia-based B.J. Greenwald & Associates, said.

In an announcement last Wednesday, PIMCO said Gross will oversee the PIMCO Corporate Income Fund, with $814 million in assets under management (founded in December 2001); PIMCO Corporate Opportunity Fund, with $1.5 billion in assets under management (founded in December 2002); the PIMCO Floating Rate Income Fund, with $356.4 million in AUM (founded in August 2003); and the PIMCO Floating Rate Strategy Fund, with $725.40 million in AUM (founded in October 2004).

Because the funds had issued auction-rate securities, and became ensnared in the ARS market’s meltdown last year, a couple of fixed-income professionals say they think Gross is trying to shore up investor confidence in the funds and in PIMCO. The company significantly reduced the level of exposure the funds have to the ARS market, but investors have lingering questions about any fund that continues to issue ARS. It is unclear whether PIMCO’s funds still issue ARS.

PIMCO did not return calls seeking comments.

When the ARS market destabilized in February 2008, PIMCO faced a difficult decision. It could redeem auction-rate securities to pay preferred bondholders, but that would risk reducing leverage in the funds and lessen income for common shareholders? Eventually PIMCO announced that it would redeem hundreds of millions in auction-rate securities in order to pay dividends to preferred bondholders, according to news reports. At the time, PIMCO’s decision aligned with widespread demands from investors and legal watchdogs to compensate investors with redemptions.

The problem was that PIMCO took much longer than other closed-end fund managers to act, Eric Jacobson, director of fixed-income research at Chicago-based Morningstar, said. When asked about the Gross move, Jacobson said: “I do suspect that to some degree it is meant to telegraph the idea that [Gross] takes the closed-end fund business very seriously.”

There seem to be a lot of changes afoot at PIMCO. Earlier this month, the  company hired three new executives, including Neel Kashkari, the former head of the government’s $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program.

Gross founded PIMCO, a global investment management firm, more than 38 years ago. As the firm’s co-chief investment officer, he has a reputation for knowing exactly how each fund under his purview is performing, no matter how many there are. “He has a tremendous level of competence,” Jacobson said. “He really knows what is going on. The decision has more to do with what an extraordinary person he is.”